Winter Will Return – In Mid January???!!! Read On!

Let’s address the most asked questions of yesterday and then get you the resort notes from around the region.

Leslie Conners of Jacksonville, FL wrote, “Will Winter make it to Western North Carolina before my annual trip on January 5th?”

Others asked the same question and simply changed the date. We are ski resort reporters, not weather gurus. That said, EVEN a lot of the weather gurus are contemplating climbing on the roofs of their offices because snow lovers (and cold weather enthusiasts) are threatening them with bodily harm! Before the season started many meteorologists and weather practitioners forecasted a winter that would be colder and snowier than normal for our area. November gave us a little cold weather head start that got Cataloochee some headline news by opening the earliest ever; however December has pretty much been the pits!

To answer Leslie’s question, we consulted with a few meteorologists who are looking for any sympathy and love that they can get; and we also consulted The Farmer’s Almanac, The National Weather Service and a few trusted sources. All are NOW referring to one small disclaimer that they seemingly agree was written into their early season forecasts in print that was so small as to be invisible that said – and we are paraphrasing, “While we believe that the region will see about 10 to 20 percent more snow than normal, we are not concerned about the bulk of the season…from January through to the end…HOWEVER, getting out of the blocks looks as though it could be a challenge.”

The truth is forecasts come out prior to a winter season, most all of us see the parts that we want and ignore the potentially negative stuff. However, I went back to my notes in October and sure enough the kind of comments shown above WERE in there. Herb Stevens, known as The Skiing Weatherman, actually nailed the majority of my paraphrased comment above, with his preseason forecast in November.

So let’s hang our hats on what we have to hope for and that is that we’re stuck in the influence of the El Nino for another couple of weeks. In Herb’s latest missive, he actually states that we should expect more of the same that we’ve BEEN dealing with, though slightly cooler weather for another two weeks and then start to see some changes to a more consistent Winter as El Nino sort of goes away. Ray Russell of Boone seems to agree with his comments that no cold air is in the foreseeable forecast until mid January.

So Leslie, it appears that YOUR trip may be “iffy” if you’re looking for 100% trail openings or pristine snowfalls. If your trip is after mid January, then hang your hopes on the above commentary.

The other most asked question was related to, “Why are the slopes so much more crowded than the last few Holiday periods?”

Simple. When you’re trying to put the same number of people on less acreage, the result will be more crowded slopes. Most of the resorts in North Carolina have about 50-60% of their slopes operating. Even though Holiday attendance seems to be off slightly from years past (according to a couple of our resort contacts) – the slopes are more crowded because there’s fewer slopes open than we’d like to see open this time of year.

However, look at the bright side – There IS skiing…and with some cold air and a snowier forecast ahead…things WILL get better as we move into the main portion of Ski Season 2006-2007. (Please God, give us this one!)

Some Resort Notes:

As far as we can tell some resorts reported that they made snow last night (Cataloochee, Hawksnest and Sapphire), but the live cams at Cataloochee and Hawksnest don’t show any machines running this morning at 7am. Temperatures seem to support the potential of snowmaking at Cataloochee as one report showed 24°. However, the higher elevations of App, Beech and Sugar are showing 30°, 36°, and 37° respectively. No snowguns were operating at those hills, so we’re going to speculate that very little, if any snowmaking went down Thursday night or overnight Friday morning. If it did, it was minimal.

That means what you skied on yesterday, is what you have for Friday. The temps probably won’t support snowmaking until Monday night and YES we do have some rain coming in for Sunday and early Monday. Let’s enjoy Friday and Saturday and then take a look at what gives for New Year’s Eve and beyond.

Note: Several people have asked us about the Hawksnest camera. We CAN log in and see live images, but their IT guy made some tweaks that are prohibiting the camera from broadcasting. He is working to resolve that and we should have it for you later today.

Hawksnest has TUBING open! If you want to do some tubing, Cataloochee and Hawksnest are your choices.

Expect decent conditions today, perhaps some thin coverage areas…and crowds. Now get out and enjoy yourselves!

Mike is the Editor and founder of SkiSoutheast.com, SkiNC.com and ResortCams.com. Since September 1996 he has posted more than 13,000 posts, articles, photos and videos promoting all of the ski areas of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.Mike is the father of four daughters, is an avid skier and enjoys golf, tennis, kayaking and hiking in the mountains. Winter snowsports and Summer boating on Watauga Lake are among his favorite pastimes.

Social Media

SkiSoutheast.com is a privately owned and operated website. It is not a part of any association, ski resort or ski organization and is a free service of appnet.com. If you would like to have your business included on this site, please email us at [email protected]

Photo submissions: All photos of the day are either images that have been submitted to us from visitors to post, from our own photographers or from the ski areas themselves. If you submit an image, it must be your own or in Creative Commons, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on SkiSoutheast/SkiNC or any of our creative designs. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, so that other readers know what they're looking at.